Humbug

I have completed my reading for the Love Blippin’ Books December prompt (LBB12): Bah humbug!, in which @squatbetty invited us to select something wintry or Christmassy. I made quick progress with my initial selection so thought I'd throw in a couple of extras.

On the wintry theme I paired Tove Jansson’s The Winter Book, a collection of her mainly autobiographical stories for adults, and her Moominland Midwinter. In the latter, Moomintroll awakes from hibernation while the rest of the family sleep, has his first experience of snow, meets a range of winter creatures and gives away the family’s jam supplies as there is so little food about.

On the Christmas theme: ‘The Fir Tree’, which is the one explicitly Christmas moomin story (from Tales from Moomin Valley), and Dickens’  "The Haunted Man', the final of his five Christmas novelettes and the last for me to read having started the two volumes about ten Chrismases ago.

 ‘The Fir Tree’ features the whole Moomin family being woken from their hibernation to find all the other inhabitants of Moominvalley rushing about in a panic because ‘Christmas is Coming’. Having no idea what Christmas is, as they normally sleep through, they reach the sensible conclusion that it must be some sort of natural disaster (after all, they have life experience of cataclysmic floods and comets) which can only be appeased by erecting and decorating a fir tree and placing food and gifts to Christmas under it. Once the threat has diminished the food and gifts are given to to the most bedraggled creatures in the neighbourhood, and so they remind us of the spirit of Christmas. 

The Haunted Man features a visitation from a Christmas ghost who offers to let the main character forget all of their life troubles and missteps, and to pass that power onto everyone they engage with. Surprise, surprise, we discover that this turns everyone into grumpy, unforgiving creatures who have no time for others. In the final act the power is reversed, everyone is nice to everyone, wrongs are righted and a massive Christmas dinner is prepared. 

I enjoyed revisiting Jansson and her moomins  (her biopic is currently on iPlayer), less so my dip into Dickens. I think Jansson and the moomins better got across their point about the true spirit of Christmas in ten pages than Dickens did in a hundred.

I think I’ve volunteered to come up with a prompt for LBB13 (hopefully not unlucky for you all) so watch this space when we enter the New Year.

Otherwise, 16 & 19yo have returned to their Mum until New Year's Eve, I went for a walk down to the dam where there were two swans a swimming and later I headed up to Ilkley to see an entertaining 2-2 draw between Ilkley Town and Nelson, brass band included!